1. Technical Field
Apparatuses and methods consistent with the present inventive concept relate to a disc-visible type disc drive apparatus, which when mounting a disc, such as CD, DVD and BD, in a main body casing, exposes a portion of the disc outside the main body casing. More particularly, exemplary embodiments relate to a disc-visible type disc drive apparatus capable of preventing foreign substances, such as dust or the like, from getting into the main body casing through an estrangement space between the disc drive apparatus and other equipment combined therewith and/or front and rear portions of the disc exposed outside the main body casing in use.
2. Background Art
A disc drive apparatus, as an apparatus for recording information on a disc, such as a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) and Blu-ray Disc (BD), or reproducing information recorded on the disc, often uses a slot-in type disc drive apparatus into which the disc is inserted through a slot.
The slot-in type disc drive apparatus can reduce a thickness as slim as possible because the disc is inserted through the slot therein. However, the slot-in type disc drive apparatus is configured so that the disc is not exposed to the outside when it is inserted and chucked therein. Thus, there was a limit in that it is always designed to have a width in the disc inserting direction, that is, the forward-backward direction, which is larger than a diameter of recordable or reproducible biggest disc.
To address such a problem, in recent times, there has been proposed a disc-visible type disc drive apparatus in which a main body casing is configured, so that when the disc is inserted therein, front and rear portions of the disc are exposed as much as a given width to the outside, thereby allowing the apparatus to reduce the width in forward-backward direction.
According to such a disc-visible type disc drive apparatus, however, since the front and rear portions of the disc are exposed outside of the main body casing through front and rear slots of the main body casing, foreign substances, such as dust or the like, may enter into the apparatus through an estrangement space between the disc drive apparatus and other equipment combined therewith and/or the front and the rear portions of the disc exposed outside the main body casing, via the front and the rear slots of the main body casing. If the foreign substances enter into the apparatus as described above, they may cause an optical system in the apparatus to reproduce or record information incorrectly or cause a drive part in the apparatus, such as a gear train or the like, to malfunction.
In addition, according to the disc-visible type disc drive apparatus, a loading roller for loading the disc into the main body casing is located in a position where it blocks the front slot at an initial state where there is no disc in the main body casing. Also, as the width in a forward-backward direction is reduced, a space for installing a sensing unit including sensing arms, disc detecting sensors and the like to detect the disc is not available at an entrance of the front slot of the main body casing. As a result, the sensing unit is not disposed in front of the loading roller, but in the rear thereof. Accordingly, to automatically load the disc when inserting the disc into the main body casing at the initial state where there is no disc in the main body casing, a user has to forcibly push the disc against the loading roller blocking the front slot, so that the disc can push the loading roller down, move into the front slot and then operate the sensing unit. Thus, there was a problem in that since the user has to forcibly push the disc until a driving motor is driven to rotate the loading roller by the operation of the sensing unit, she or he should feel a labored disc inserting sensation.